John Ostwald’s Then & Now: Alcohol and drug abuse in the armed forces

EDITOR’S NOTE: Columnist John Ostwald will submit daily columns for the two weeks prior to Veterans Day. The columns cover a variety of armed forces issues. The information in the columns comes from interviews with veterans and family members, research and John’s perspective as an educator and veteran.

My buddy Dave yelled to me from the doorway of our barracks as he stared intently into the parking lot. “What’s up?” I said. “What is that weirdo doing?” he responded as he pointed to the cars. There was one of our guys holding a tarp on his back bowing up and down over the opened trunk of his car. It is hard to describe. The shore patrol (Navy cops) arrived a minute later. Our comrade was inhaling fumes from a bunch of open containers to get high.

In the service, what motivates a person to become involved in drug use and abuse is complex. Some service members are lonely, bored, scared, depressed and sometimes just seeking solace. Alcohol and drug abuse were prevalent when I served in the late sixties and early seventies. Many of the guys my age were experimenting with or using various forms of marijuana and hallucinogens like LSD. We also drank excessively during our time off in dive bars and we had a beer machine in our barracks Most armed forces bases in the United States have a “strip” of bars that cater to service personnel. The older career oriented guys seemed to be drunk a lot and time off. One of my other buddies said that a bunch of middle schoolers could take over our base.

The availability of alcohol and other drugs ,in the service, depends on factors like the location of your duty station and the time period. Army veteran Kurt Engler, who was stationed in Germany in 1961, said that beer consumption and the fights that sometimes followed mirrored the use in the civilian world – nothing unusual.

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An Iraq vet told me that alcohol availability was nonexistent, but liquor was sold on the black market. He said that you couldn’t be sure of the contents of a bottle that was labeled with something American like “Jack Daniels” or “Johnny Walker Red.” “The only other way to get real alcohol was to have it mailed to you.”

A veteran of Desert Storm said that there wasn’t enough downtime to spend drinking or using other drugs and added that there was nothing available; “We were in a desert.” I asked a National Guard member who was deployed to the Far East at one point, how alcohol use affected him when he returned home. “I struggled with it when I came back and didn’t do well with the post war civilian stressors. I just turned twenty one and had lots of money. I volunteered for a second tour because I wasn’t doing well in “the world.”

A Vietnam vet mentioned that alcohol was sometimes dropped by helicopter. Another vet said ‘It would be difficult to find one guy in our battalion who was straight.” After the war many Vietnam vets have been dramatically affected by abuse of alcohol.

Currently, in the United States, the opioid epidemic is getting a lot of attention. My neighbor and other wounded veterans came back from Vietnam addicted to pain killers. There is little doubt that some current veterans also have this dependency. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse “Rates of prescription opioid misuse are higher among service members than among civilians. Survey results suggest drug use among returning soldiers is often a coping strategy to treat arousal symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Returning military personnel also experience higher rates of chronic pain and related medical use of opioid pain relievers compared to the civilian population. Although the opioid challenge is important, almost all the veterans that I interviewed agreed that alcohol abuse was by far most problematic for service personnel before, during and after their tours of duty. The National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse concurred. “Heavy alcohol use is a significant problem in the military. Personnel often use alcohol in an attempt to cope with stress, boredom, loneliness, and the lack of other recreational activities.”

John R. Ostwald is a professor emeritus from Hudson Valley Community College, a newspaper columnist, Vietnam-era veteran and author whose work has been presented on TV, radio and at national conferences.